THE CASE OF SOPHIE LIONNET

hey guys it's bella welcome back to my channel i hope you're all having a wonderful day today in today's mystery monday we are going to be covering another solved case we're in the quiet well-to-do neighborhood of south fields in southwest london 21 year old sophie leone was tortured and murdered at the hands of her employers and the bizarre reason behind it will leave you shocked and confused before we get into the case i just quickly want to thank today sponsor audible for making this video possible i love audible i use it when i'm walking mia when i'm cooking when i'm cleaning when i'm in the shower like literally anytime i need background noise i've got audible on i recently finished listening to a good girl's guide to murder which was so good it's by holly jackson and if you guys like a good mystery thriller which i'm assuming you do if you're here watching a mystery monday then i highly recommend but if you know that's not really a vibe and you're into something else audible really has everything they have an incredible selection of audio books audible originals podcasts of all genres bestsellers new releases motivation wellness business romance fantasy seriously you name it and as an audible member you get to choose one title a month to keep from the whole catalog including bestsellers and new releases and now with an audible membership you get even more value because all audible members now get access to a growing selection of titles included with your membership that you can listen to all you want and they add more every single month and it's really easy to listen to it anytime anyplace with the audible app so if you guys are interested in checking audible out you can get a free 30-day trial if you go to audible.com bellafiore or if you text a bellafiore to 500 at 500. so sabrina coutier was born in 1983 in algeria but her family moved to paris when she was just young and it was in paris when she was 18 years old she was at a fun fair and she met a man named asim meduni who went by sam he was five years older than her and he was also french algerian and in 2005 when sabrina was 22 and sam was 27 they left france and moved to london where sabrina worked as an au pair and she also worked as a makeup artist worked for a french bank but she then went on to become quite successful working as a stylist a fashion designer and a songwriter she was described as this glamorous woman who was soft-spoken but she definitely had another raisy side to her which you will see more of throughout this case her and sam were very on and off and in 2011 they were off and sabrina was in line at a bank in notting hill she was talking to the manager and behind her in the line was mark walton and mark walton is one of the founding members of a boy band called boyzone um by 2011 he was also managing a band called blue and i think at this point he was working with or had worked with like lady gaga enrique iglesias jlo like he was doing pretty well and he was at the bank and sabrina asked the bank manager about the man who was standing behind her which was ma and then mark also happened to ask about the woman who was standing in front of him so sabrina and the bank manager was like what are the odds she just asked about you too like let me set you guys up so sabrina ended up messaging mark kind of inviting him out to a bar and he went to the bar thinking it was a date but when he gets there there's actually 11 other guys already at the bar and sabrina had invited these 12 men not on dates but as kind of like a recruiting thing to get them into this phone line pyramid scheme so a lot of the men left because they were like what is going on like i'm not buying into your pyramid scheme i thought this was a date most of them left mark walton though stayed because he was intrigued by her and he actually ended up investing in this pyramid scheme phone line scam she was like you know it's gonna be 225 pounds if you want to sign up but that was a lie too because it ended up costing him 800 pounds to sign up plus another fee plus monthly fees so i don't know i think he personally i feel like he was doing really well for himself so he's like i'm just gonna kind of invest a little bit of money into this so i can keep kind of getting to know sabrina and it worked because they kept getting to know each other and they were talking on the phone every single day they were meeting up and seeing each other every single night they were just getting along like a house on fire and sabrina really started to open up to mark she told him that she had actually been abused for her entire life and had even been raped by two of her uncles so a large part of mark's draw to sabrina was that he wanted to protect her and take care of her and sabrina was obsessed with mark two because he was like you know this well-off guy who had a lot of famous connections which she really enjoyed and so a few months after meeting like five or so months after meeting mark actually moved out of his apartment in notting hill and moved in with sabrina into her apartment in queensway and started paying her 2 000 pounds a month rent and soon after moving in together he definitely started to see this other crazy side to sabrina she was very prone to violent outbursts like one time she actually woke him up by punching him in the face so hard that it left a bruise for quite a while afterward and the reason she punched him while he was sleeping is because he was snoring there was also another occasion where she threw an ash tray at his head in an argument she was also extremely jealous she actually had a child from a previous relationship when she met mark and after they moved in together they went through four full-time nannies because sabrina was so jealous she accused him of cheating with every single one of these nannies to the point where she put cameras all throughout their apartment to like keep an eye on him and these nannies there was never any evidence of him ever doing anything untoward with these nannies cheating on sabrina at all like even speaking inappropriately with these nannies there was no evidence of it but sabrina just couldn't accept it and she continuously accused him of cheating on her with them and mark letter said in interviews that he knew there were problems she lied she had these violent outbursts but he felt like she was really damaged from everything she had gone through in the past and he just wanted to look after her and take care of her but turns out that everything she had gone through everything she had told him she had gone through was all lies and he just said he knew that it was crazy but he was just so in love with her after 14 months together sabrina actually became pregnant and mark was ecstatic he was so excited to be a father but just a few months after she told him that she was pregnant she was like you know i've got to go to france my mum is really not doing well she's sick and then a couple of weeks after she went to france she randomly calls mark and she goes the baby's dead i had a miscarriage move on with your life and mark was devastated of course he was so excited to have a child and he actually spoke to sabrina's brother about this and turns out that sabrina was lying she didn't have a miscarriage and she actually did have the baby and mark still stayed with her eventually in august 2013 he put down a 4 000 pound deposit on a flattened south fields for sabrina to live in and he also put down the first five to six months of rent for her to look after her and their baby and then he moved to la for work and that is when sabrina completely cut contact with him and so he ended up cutting her off financially because he didn't know if the baby was actually his and so she in a fit of rage of him cutting her off she called up all of his biggest clients like major celebrities and started telling them all that he was a paedophile she also filed like a 30 police reports against him which i don't really know what they're going to do from the uk to him over in la but she filed 30 police reports against him claiming he was part of like a black magic pedophile ring she also claimed that he was sexually abusing her cat and the catch with that one is that she never had a cat she never owned a cat i mean she was just pissed about the whole situation and because mark was in la and she couldn't get her hands on him she started taking her frustrations on mark out on those around her and she was already prone to these violent outbursts against you know people who weren't mark but once he cut her off financially she just got even worse she became very well known around the neighborhood of south fields where she lived for these violent outbursts because southfields was kind of like this well to do quiet neighborhood where there was a lot of gossip like everyone was in everyone's business everyone knew what everyone else was up to when they were walking down the streets like they really took notice of everyone and they spoke about it amongst themselves very gossipy and so everyone knew about these incidents that she was involved in the owner of the local news agent which was situated just across the road from sabrina's flat in south fields his name was sunny patel and he had experienced her outburst first hand she went in there one time to do her groceries and she had like forgotten her wallet she'd forgotten cash cards everything and instead of being like oh i'm so sorry i'm just gonna pop home and grab my money she started yelling at him and raging at him to the point where she actually called the police on him i mean she's the one who can't pay for her groceries but she called the police on him and the police came and they had to escort her out which i mean has to be a major blow to the ego to call the police on someone and the police are like actually you're in the wrong get out of here there were a lot of instances where she acted like this toward people in the community neighbors local shop workers she was very known for these violent outbursts and lashing out at people she was known by neighbors as antisocial and odd and she wasn't just a bad neighbor in the way that she would have these violent outbursts she also just seemed really annoying to live near like she left garbage out on the street she blocked people's driveways with her car like she didn't pay her rent on time she just seemed like an overall really annoying person to be around so after mark left for la and sabrina was cut off financially she ended up getting back with sam madooni and in 2016 he moved in with her into the south field flat sam had gotten a degree in economics and worked as a financial analyst so he made great money enough money to buy two properties back in france which he rented out so he was doing pretty well from himself and he was able to provide for himself and sabrina he helped her raise her two children both of which were from previous relationships and he pretty much worshipped the ground sabrina walked on and was very submissive towards her even when he found out she was cheating on him which she did multiple times she left him multiple times for other men just like she did when she left to be with mark but she always came back to sam and he always took her back no questions asked like he was obsessed with her really he would do anything for her even though she clearly did not feel the same way like she left him multiple times for multiple other men and in this case like where he's finally moved back in with her they've gotten back together after mark's left she is still very clearly not over mark i mean she talks about him constantly she's even been taking his photo down to like the local shops and being like have you seen this man and if you've seen him like you need to call the police immediately because he's been like breaking into my house to abuse my children and steal sam's semen this is what she was literally telling people that mark was doing when mark was living on the other side of the world in la like it was physically impossible for him to be doing these things anyway in 2017 sabrina and sam decide to hire an au pair which is kind of like a liver nanny and au pair is typically somebody who's younger like between 18 and 30 and typically a foreign person who will come to another country to stay with a host family who will provide them with a place to stay at food and pocket money in exchange for helping out with the kids and some housework but they're not entitled to a salary and they're not classed as employees or workers which means they aren't even entitled to the minimum wage they're not entitled to paid leave at least in the uk anyway in the uk there are no rules around working conditions pay leave that sort of thing the official uk website actually says that au pairs are typically paid about 90 pounds a week but if they do make enough money they are still subject to tax and national insurance even though they're not even classed as workers there's like no regulations which leaves au pairs open to a lot of abuse and mistreatment so in 2017 they hire an au pair and they hire 21 year old sophie leone she was born on the 7th of january in 1996 to parents catherine and patrick lynnae in the town of troy's in northeast france at some point catherine and patrick divorced and catherine got remarried to a man named stephen devilloni who became sophie's stepfather but sophie remained close with both of her parents she was a beautiful girl and she was described as quiet and gentle with a warm smile she loved playing the guitar reading ice skating and she loved animals her mother catherine said she was someone who hated suffering and injustice and she was passionate about preventing animal cruelty she was a selfless and generous person and it was her dream to be able to work with children when she finished school she went on to complete a vocational course in child care and shortly after that she was offered a position as an au pair in london which was the perfect opportunity for her because she wanted to improve her english and like i said it was her dream to work with kids and so in january 2016 she moved to london to work for 36 year old sabrina coutier and 41 year old sam dooney and they paid her just 63 a month at first everything seemed fine sabrina and sam seemed like loving parents sophie got along really well with the children as well and they adored her right back which everyone in the neighborhood seemed to notice neighbors described sophie as very shy and humble she was a beautiful person she was always very pleasant and polite one neighbor said quote she was an angel she was so good with the children and had a lovely face she was kind and quite shy and with the children she set up a mini shop on the street selling sweets and biscuits sophie also befriended a lot of other nannies working in the area because there were quite a few and when she would call her mother she seemed really happy with how everything was going she said she got along great with sabrina and they would often have chats over tea and as i mentioned sabrina did work as a makeup artist at one time so she was really into doing hair and makeup and she even gave sophie a makeover unfortunately though it wasn't long before things started to go downhill sabrina started becoming a lot more demanding and she was forcing sophie to work 80 hours a week and mind you she was only getting paid 63 pounds a month and the residents of southfield started to notice that they hardly ever saw sabrina with the children anymore that sophie was the one that would have to drop them off pick them up do all of the grocery shopping like she was pretty much doing everything sunny patel the owner of the news agent said that sophie would come into the news agent twice a day to buy some groceries and some sweets for the kids and she would also buy cigarettes which he was like taken aback by at first because he actually thought that she was 13 even though she was 21 she just looked very young as time went by residents of southfield started to notice that sophie was becoming really really thin and she was looking quite disheveled which they kind of just chalked up to maybe she was adjusting to life with the kids and was maybe just getting a little bit overwhelmed by them michael cromer the owner of the local fish and chip shop was one of the people who noticed this he noticed she seemed to be struggling and so he asked her if everything was okay if there was anything that was wrong and she said you know my mom back in france is not doing so well and so he started to give sophie some chips for free and some soft drinks for free and when sabrina found out about this she actually went into the fish and chip shop and she screamed at michael she screamed at sophie and she dragged sophie out of the fish and chip shop and michael saw this and he was shocked and so the next time he saw sophie he actually offered to pay for her flight back to france but sophie declined i think because she was just so terrified of what sabrina would do if she found out and michael didn't push it because he didn't know what was going on behind closed doors sabrina was known to have these violent outbursts and so he didn't know and nobody knew that behind closed doors sophie was actually being abused by sabrina and sam and what's crazy is that sabrina actually started to accuse sophie of having an affair with sabrina's ex-boyfriend mark walton who might i remind you lives in la on the other side of the world sophie doesn't know who he is he doesn't know who sophie is like he's never even heard of sophie they've never even lived in the uk at the same time like he moved to la before sophie was hired as an au pair years before sophie was hired as an au pair like three years prior so we obviously denied everything because she was like i don't even know who this man is like obviously i haven't slept with him if i've never even heard of him but sabrina was not buying it and so she actually started to deny sophie food that's why she was looking so thin and disheveled was because she was being denied food sabrina constantly interrogated her about mark and would say horrible things to her and would call her a a a like just all these horrible things sophie didn't tell anybody because she was scared of sabrina and sam she was just learning how to speak english and she was very like shy and quiet so she's not just gonna go and tell people she doesn't know she actually didn't even tell her mum she told her mum that she wanted to come home but she just said it was because she was like a bit overwhelmed with the kids and so her mom encouraged her to stick it out because she had no idea what was going on behind closed doors she had no idea that her daughter was being abused in any way eventually sophie did tell her mum that she wanted to leave she didn't tell her why but she told her she wanted to leave and so her mother catherine actually did buy her a plane ticket home to france but sophie never received this ticket because sabrina actually destroyed it as well as taking away sophie's passport over the next six weeks sabrina's delusions only got worse she started accusing sophie of letting mark into the house while everyone was asleep and she said that while he was there he would go around injecting everyone with heroin so that he could abuse sexually abuse sabrina's children while everyone was like passed out on heroin and as a result of these delusions she stopped paying sophie she had already taken away her passport but now she also took away her phone and so the only way sophie could contact her parents was on sabrina's phone while sabrina was standing right next to her she stopped allowing her to leave the house unless she was picking up or dropping off the children or if she was going grocery shopping she was basically treating her like a slave and eventually she stopped letting sophie leave the house all together up until this point sabrina was the one who was solely responsible for the abuse and the beatings against sophie because when she would be doing these things sam would just leave and go for a walk but at this point sabrina roped him into it so he was the one who was carrying out the physical abuse and beatings against sophie they would keep her awake for days at a time they would waterboard her in the bath they would beat her with electrical cords and other instruments and they actually recorded some of this torture they recorded the last 12 days of sophie's life there are 18 recordings in total and the recordings themselves have never been released because they're just too horrific but the transcripts have been and they are heartbreaking there's actually a photo that was released from one of these recordings of sophie and she just looks almost unrecognizable like she's so thin and emaciated and you can just tell she's deteriorating and it's really heartbreaking and in these recordings sabrina and sam are yelling at her they're berating her they're swearing at her calling her all sorts of names and they're trying to get a confession out of her for all of this mark stuff which isn't even possible like the things that they're saying aren't possible because mark moved to the other side of the world like three years before sophie even arrived in london the transcripts are really really heartbreaking as well because sophie hardly ever responds i mean she's probably so exhausted and worn down because she's been experiencing this torture for like six weeks at this point and there are times in the transcripts where the translator writes stuff like you can hear sophie whimpering here or you can hear sophie crying here or you can hear loud banging noises here you can hear the beating here sort of thing like it's really really sad to read sophie is clearly so incredibly terrified and sabrina and sam are completely unhinged there's one time when sabrina says i know you've brought him here because i can smell it you smell like sex when you come in the house for the majority of these transcripts sabrina is just yelling at sophie and sam is like playing good copying like you know you can tell me like i can make this all stop if you just confess to me and it seems like they truly believe what they were saying like sabrina and sam really really believed that sophie had actually had an affair with mark and she was actually letting mark in the house it was completely unhinged and sophie like i said she hardly responded she had been deprived of food she had been made to stay awake for days on end they've been waterboarding her beating her for six weeks now like she is just so exhausted and worn down to me i feel like they were really suffering folia do like they really believed the things that they were saying it seems like sabrina had these delusions i mean we've we've spoken about folia do in quite a few of my cases recently but if you don't know what it is it's it translates roughly to madness of two and it's like a shared psychosis disorder so it seems like sabrina was having these delusions and she was passing them on to sam and he was sharing in these delusions and they were just kind of bouncing off each other and it was just getting worse and worse as time went by they were both in this sort of psychosis where they really believed these delusions sophie tells sabrina multiple times that she just wants to go back home to france which you think that would kind of solve everything for sabrina it's like if she goes back to france then she can't let mark into your house and let mark sexually abuse your children but instead sabrina said if you even try to leave you will get arrested by the police and you will go to jail for 40 years after six weeks of torture on the 18th of september in 2017 the final recording was made sophie gave a false confession to sabrina after being worn down over the last six weeks and sabrina had been telling her this whole time like just confess and you can go just confess and you can go back to france but after sophie gave her false confession sabrina and sam drowned her in the bathtub and they then proceeded to have sex on the floor of the bathroom next to sophie's body i don't know if this is like some sort of sexual gratification from the murder or i mean that's very rare in female killers or if it was like she used sex as kind of a manipulation tool on sam or if it was kind of like a reward for killing her it's believed that after this they then stored sophie's body in a suitcase until they were ready to dispose of her two days later on the 20th of september multiple neighbors contacted 999 to report that these huge black fumes that smelt putrid were coming from the yard of sam and sabrina's flat and so the fire department arrived they knocked on the front door and sam answered and he was like oh you know it's just we're simply having a little barbecue out the back cooking some chicken and the firefighters were like look even if that's the case and it's just gotten out of hand we need to come and put this out because it's dangerously close to the neighbor's properties it's dangerously close to your own patio we need to come through and put this out so they go out the back and they actually do find like a little portable barbecue with some chicken thighs on it but that's not where these huge black smelly fumes are coming from they're coming from a bonfire right next to it which is like burning out of control and so the firefighters put out this fire and that's when they see some remains of like human fingers and a human nose and they're like what's this from and sam goes oh you know we were just cooking up an entire lamb we just chucked an entire lamb on the bonfire that we'd gotten from the markets and the firefighters take a closer look and that's when they find human clothing and jewelry and they're like that's not a lamb so the firefighter contacts 999 and soon enough six police cars line the street and the entire street is cordoned off because of how badly burned sophie's body was it actually took them two weeks to identify her and it also prevented them from being able to determine a cause of death the three most likely causes were a blow to the head strangulation or drowning sophie had experienced all three but it's unclear which finally killed her they were able to determine though that while she was alive she had sustained a fractured jaw five fractured ribs and a fractured sternum which is like incredibly hard to do and not only was it fractured but they were able to determine that she had lived with the fractured sternum for up to three days which would have been so incredibly painful for her her injuries were apparently consistent with injuries sustained from a catastrophic car accident to think about what she had to endure for the last weeks of her life is heartbreaking and it's even worse because they actually found a note in sophie's like tiny dark cramped little room they kept her in and it said why me i need help to stop them sabrina coutier and ocean madooni were arrested for the murder and at first they tried to say it was an accident and sam you know would do anything for sabrina so he actually tried to take the blame at first he said that he and sabrina were just trying to question sophie about her relationship with mark walton and when she wasn't cooperative they kind of put her head under the water a couple of times and eventually sam got angry punched her in the face causing her to fall and hit her head and slip under the water where she drowned and he said he did try to revive her but with no luck later on the 15th of march she actually retracted that statement and said that he'd just been trying to protect sabrina and that actually it was all her fault that he had been asleep when sophie died and when he woke up and saw her unresponsive in the bathtub he tried to revive her but with no luck sabrina of course blamed sam and said that she had absolutely no involvement which is ridiculous because she knew when she was telling this lie like when she was saying i have no involvement she knew that her phone had been confiscated and she knew that her phone had those 18 recordings of the last 12 days of sophie's life in which she is incredibly involved like she is like beating her she's berating her she's yelling at her she's saying horrible things to her in these recordings that the police have yet she's trying to say she had nothing to do with it both sabrina and sam were assessed by psychiatrists and sabrina was diagnosed with depression and borderline personality disorder but of course these two things do not make somebody violent they don't make somebody a killer so while she was a mentally unwell at the time of the matters she was not criminally insane sam wasn't diagnosed with anything however it is believed that he truly believed the delusions that sophie was actually letting mark into the house and allowing mark to inject people with heroin allowing mark to sexually abuse sabrina's two children and it's believed that he was suffering from a folia do like i mentioned earlier their trial began in may of 2018 and they both admitted to trying to dispose of sophie's body but they continued to blame each other for the actual matter the evidence was overwhelmingly against them especially considering police had obtained those recordings of the torture and so on the 24th of may and 2018 after a two-month trial both sabrina and sam were found guilty of the murder of sophie leone at sentencing sabrina actually wrote a letter addressed to sophie and also to her family which she read at the sentencing hearing to try and get a bit of leniency and the letter read dear sophie may peace be with you first of all i wish everyone including sophie especially her parents and family who are suffering badly to know how deeply sorry i am for what happened to sophie we shared many good times together as well as pains until things went terribly wrong and it ended up in this horrendous tragedy i think of you every day and i'm shocked and sad that you are not a part of this world anymore it feels like a horrible dream to me that i wish i could just wake up from every day i live with sadness and sorrow i'm suffering every day thinking of you and what happened to you that dreadful night i only wish i could turn back the clock so that it never happened and you would still be alive with us today i will now live without hope and i can't ever imagine being happy again i struggle every day and i'm disappointed in myself sophie i wish things could have been different and i hope that you rest in peace with god with deepest regret sabrina coutier the judge knew sabrina was full of and so he said quote you were both involved in torturing sophie in the bath in the lead-up to her death in making her think she would drown unless you gave her information you wanted which was not in her power to give because it did not exist the suffering and torture you put her through before her death was prolonged and without pity i do not think you thought for one moment you were acting lawfully i'm sure you knew the way you interrogated her was unacceptable in the extreme that it was unlawful to assault her and she was in a dreadful state by the time of her death and torturing her in the bath was totally and utterly wrong the judge then sentenced both sabrina and sam to a life sentence to serve a minimum of 30 years sophie's body was returned to her family in france where she was laid to rest and over 150 people attended a celebration of sophie's life on the 6th of june in 2018 her family was absolutely shattered by what happened her mother catherine said quote no one no god will ever forgive you both for what you have done to my daughter you were equally as evil as one another sophie's father patrick said quote sophie was so nurturing she liked children and animals she couldn't stand seeing others suffering and it breaks my heart to know that she was abused to the end of her life and that is everything for this case it's truly a heartbreaking one honestly because i just felt so heartbroken for sophie and for her family you know this was such an exciting opportunity for her to come to london and improve her english and work with children which is something she'd always dreamed of doing and she ended up with these two completely unhinged people who accused her of things that weren't even possible the photo of sophie from those recordings is honestly devastating it breaks my heart and just to think you know she seemed like such a beautiful person and she had to go through that for six weeks but that's everything for this case that's it for me today guys i really hope you enjoy it the rest of your day and hopefully i will see you in my next video bye

Channel: Bella Fiori

Views: 814,499

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Id: 4NZIcWHOGIk

Length: 31min 54sec (1914 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2022